Gareth Higgins using Irish insight in USA on Tucson
With people talking about the terrible violence in Tucson this last weekend, Writer, activist and executive director of Wild Goose Festival Gareth Higgins wrote in the Huffington Post what religious people should do to keep the conversation going.
Growing up in Northern Ireland, Higgins knows firsthand what it is like to be surrounded by violence. Nearly 4000 people—politicians, public officials, political activists, and innocent bystanders—were killed in 25 years. Today, Higgins lives in North Carolina and sees the similarities to Northern Ireland’s problems—where the Protestants lived in fear and the Irish Republicans and nationalists were “living under suspicion and abused into second class citizen status.”
The problems in Northern Ireland have improved, he says because they stopped, they talked, they took responsibility, and they made a deal to govern themselves. Higgins credits their miraculous change to the realization by both parties that the cost of violence is too high and because they allowed the mediation of a third party—US intervention in the form of Senator George Mitchell.
Higgins, a quasi-outsider, recommends four steps:
1. The fear expressed by many at the pace of social change is real, and needs to be responded to with respectful listening, not mockery . . . The degree to which the fears they articulate are genuine will only find its proportion when their political opponents treat them with respect . . .
2. There is a relationship between the psychological cost of recent wars and violent political rhetoric. The cultural expression of what the United States means is part of the problem: seeing itself as a hammer leads to seeing everyone else as nails.
3. As the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 horror approaches, it would be good to take time to ask if lamentation was postponed in favor of revenge, and then to finally start having a national conversation about how to grieve in a way that honors the victims without turning painful emotions into a reason to create more violence, here or overseas.
4. Religious rhetoric in the US has too often been put to the service of carving up dividing lines between who “belongs” and who doesn’t. The involvement of national religious figures in demanding vengeance for 9/11 and promoting the war in Iraq are only among the most recent manifestations of how religion can be a force for destruction. This shadow side is mirrored in politics . . . Religion, politics and the media are not the problem, but they do have shadow sides that need to be taken seriously.
Higgins chaired a public meeting during the peace process, and an IRA leader attended. Higgins asked him for assurance that he didn’t need to be afraid of him anymore.
“Well, Gareth, lots of us have reasons to be afraid of various people,” he said.
“OK Gerry,” Higgins said, “I’ll make you a deal: I’ll not give you any reasons to be afraid of me, if you don’t give me any reasons to be afraid of you.”
Continue reading on Examiner.com: How religion can affect political violence – National Episcopal | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/episcopal-in-national/how-religion-can-affect-political-violence#ixzz1ArQGnr7x